Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him Part 28

The draft of the League Const.i.tution was denounced even before its contents were known or explained. The bare fact that the doc.u.ment had proved acceptable to the British Empire aroused the instant antagonism of the "professional" Irish-Americans, the "professional" German- Americans, the "professional" Italian-Americans, and all those others whose political fortunes depended upon the persistence and accentuation of racial prejudices. Where one hyphen was scourged the year before a score of hyphens was now encouraged and approved. In Washington the President arranged a conference with the Senators and Representatives in charge of foreign relations, and laid the Covenant frankly before them for purposes of discussion and criticism. The att.i.tude of the Republican Senators was one of sullenness and suspicion, Senator Lodge refusing to state his objections or to make a single recommendation. Others, however, pointed out that no express recognition was given to the Monroe Doctrine; that it was not expressly provided that the League should have no authority to act or express a judgment on matters of domestic policy; that the right to withdraw from the League was not expressly recognized; and that the const.i.tutional right of the Congress to determine all questions of peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded.

The President, in answer, gave it as his opinion that these points were already covered satisfactorily in the Covenant, but that he would be glad to make the language more explicit, and entered a promise to this effect. Mr. Root and Mr. Taft were also furnished with copies of the Covenant and asked for their views and criticism, and upon receipt of them the President again gave a.s.surance that every proposed change and clarification would be made upon his return to Paris. On March 4th, immediately following these conferences, and the day before the sailing of the President, Senator Lodge rose in his place and led his Republican colleagues in a bold and open attack upon the League of Nations and the war aims of America. The following account of the proceedings is taken from the _Congressional Record_:

_Mr. Lodge_: Mr. President, I desire to take only a moment of the time of the Senate. I wish to offer the resolution which I hold in my hand, a very brief one:

Whereas under the Const.i.tution it is a function of the Senate to advise and consent to, or dissent from, the ratification of any treaty of the United States, and no such treaty can become operative without the consent of the Senate expressed by the affirmative vote of two thirds of the Senators present; and

Whereas owing to the victory of the arms of the United States and of the nations with whom it is a.s.sociated, a Peace Conference was convened and is now in session at Paris for the purpose of settling the terms of peace; and

Whereas a committee of the Conference has proposed a const.i.tution for the League of Nations and the proposal is now before the Peace Conference for its consideration; Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate of the United States in the discharge of its const.i.tutional duty of advice in regard to treaties, That it is the sense of the Senate that while it is their sincere desire that the nations of the world should unite to promote peace and general disarmament, the const.i.tution of the League of Nations in the form now proposed to the Peace Conference should not be accepted by the United States; and be it

Resolved further, That it is the sense of the Senate that the negotiations on the part of the United States should immediately be directed to the utmost expedition of the urgent business of negotiating peace terms with Germany satisfactory to the United States and the nations with whom the United States is a.s.sociated in the war against the German Government, and that the proposal for a League of Nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should be then taken up for careful and serious consideration.

I ask unanimous consent for the present consideration of this resolution.

_Mr. Swanson_: I object to the introduction of the resolution.

_Mr. Lodge_: Objection being made, of course I recognize the objection. I merely wish to add, by way of explanation, the following: The undersigned Senators of the United States, Members and Members- Elect of the Sixty-sixth Congress, hereby declare that, if they had had the opportunity, they would have voted for the foregoing resolution:

Henry Cabot Lodge James E. Watson Philander C. Knox Thomas Sterling Lawrence Y. Sherman J. S. Frelinghuysen Harry S. New W. G. Harding George H. Moses Frederick Hale J. W. Wadsworth, Jr. William E. Borah Bert M. Fernald Walter E. Edge Albert B. c.u.mmins Reed Smoot F. E. Warren Asle J. Gronna Frank B. Brandegee Lawrence C. Phipps William M. Calder Selden P. Spencer Henry W. Keyes Hiram W. Johnson Boies Penrose Charles E. Townsend Carroll S. Page William P. Dillingham George P. McLean I. L. Lenroot Joseph Irwin France Miles Poindexter Medill McCormick Howard Sutherland Charles Curtis Truman H. Newberry L. Heisler Ball

I ought to say in justice to three or four Senators who are absent at great distances from the city that we were not able to reach them; but we expect to hear from them to-morrow, and if, as we expect, their answers are favourable their names will be added to the list.

A full report of this action was cabled to Europe, as a matter of course, and when the President arrived in Paris on March 14th, ten days later, he was quick to learn of the disastrous consequences. The Allies, eagerly accepting the orders of the Republican majority, had lost no time in repudiating the President and the solemn agreements that they had entered into with him. The League of Nations was not discarded and the plan adopted for a preliminary peace with Germany was based upon a frank division of the spoils, the reduction of Germany to a slave state, and the formation of a military alliance by the Allies for the purpose of guaranteeing the gains. Not only this, but an Allied army was to march at once to Russia to put down the Bolshevists and the Treaty itself was to be administered by the Allied high command, enforcing its orders by an army of occupation. The United States, as a rare favour, was to be permitted to pay the cost of the Russian expedition and such other incidental expenses as might arise in connection with the military dictatorship that was to rule Europe.

While primarily the plan of Foch and the other generals, it had the approval of statesmen, even those who were a.s.sumed to represent the liberal thought of England being neck-deep in the conspiracy.

Not a single party to the cabal had any doubt as to its success. Was it not the case that the Republican Senators, now in the majority, spoke for America rather than the President? Had the Senators not stated formally that they did not want the League of Nations, and was the Republican party itself not on record with the belief that the Allies must have the right to impose peace terms of their own choosing, and that these terms should show no mercy to the "accursed Hun"? ... The President allowed himself just twenty-four hours in which to grasp the plot in all its details, and then he acted, ordering the issuance of this statement:

"The President said to-day that the decision made at the Peace Conference in its Plenary Session, January 25, 1919, to the effect that the establishment of a League of Nations should be made an integral part of the Treaty of Peace, is of final force and that there is no basis whatever for the reports that a change in this decision was contemplated."

...On March 26th, it was announced, grudgingly enough, that there would be a league of nations as an integral part of the Peace Treaty.

It was now the task of the President to take up the changes that had been suggested by his Republican enemies, and this was the straw that broke his back. There was not a single suggested change that had honesty back of it. The League was an a.s.sociation of sovereigns, and as a matter of course any sovereign possessed the right of withdrawal.

The League, as an international advisory body, could not possibly deal with domestic questions under any construction of the Covenant. No power of Congress was abridged, and necessarily Congress would have to act before war could be declared or a single soldier sent out of the country. Instead of recognizing the Monroe Doctrine as an American policy, the League legitimized it as a world policy. The President, however, was bound to propose that these plain propositions be put in kindergarten language for the satisfaction of his enemies, and it was this proposal that gave Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and their a.s.sociates a new chance for resistance. All of the suggested changes were made without great demur until the question of the Monroe Doctrine was reached, and then French and English bitterness broke all restraints.

Why were they expected to make every concession to American prejudice when the President would make none to European traditions? They had gone to the length of accepting the doctrine of Monroe for the whole of the earth, but now, because American pride demanded it, they must make public confession of America's right to give orders. No! A thousand times no! It was high time for the President to give a little consideration to French and English and Italian prejudices--time for him to realize that the lives of these governments were at stake as well as his own, and that Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Sonnino had parliaments to deal with that were just as unreasonable as the Congress of the United States. If the President asked he must be willing to give.

As if at a given signal, France renewed her claim for the Rhine Valley and the Saar Basin; Italy clamoured anew for Fiume and the Dalmatian coast; and j.a.pan, breaking a long silence, rushed to the fore with her demand for Shantung in fee simple and the right of her nationals to full equality in the United States.

Around this time the President fell suddenly ill and took to his bed. That the illness was serious is evidenced by the following letter which Doctor Grayson wrote me:

Paris, 10 April 1919.

DEAR MR. TUMULTY:

While the contents of this letter may possibly be somewhat out of date by the time it reaches you, nevertheless you may find something in it of interest.

This has been one of the most complexing and trying weeks of my existence over here. The President was taken violently sick last Thursday. The attack was very sudden. At three o'clock he was apparently all right; at six he was seized with violent paroxysms of coughing, which were so severe and frequent that it interfered with his breathing. He had a fever of 103 and a profuse diarrhoea. I was at first suspicious that his food had been tampered with, but it turned out to be the beginning of an attack of influenza. That night was one of the worst through which I have ever pa.s.sed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious. Since that time he has been gradually improving every day so that he is now back at work--he went out for the first time yesterday. This disease is so treacherous, especially in this climate, that I am perhaps over- anxious for fear of a flare-back--and a flare-back in a case of this kind often results in pneumonia. I have been spending every minute of my time with him, not only as physician but as nurse. Mrs. Wilson was a perfect angel through it all.

Sincerely, CARY T. GRAYSON.

Continuing the narrative Mr. Creel writes:

On April 7th, the President struggled to his feet and faced the Council in what everyone recognized as a final test of strength. There must be an end to this dreary, interminable business of making agreements only to break them. An agreement must be reached once for all. If a peace of justice, he would remain; if a peace of greed, then he would leave. He had been second to none in recognizing the wrongs of the Allies, the state of mind of their peoples, and he stood as firmly as any for a treaty that would bring guilt home to the Germans, but he could not, and would not, agree to the repudiation of every war aim or to arrangements that would leave the world worse off than before. The _George Washington_ was in Brooklyn. By wireless the President ordered it to come to Brest at once.

The gesture was conclusive as far as England and France were concerned. Lloyd George swung over instantly to the President's side, and on the following day Le Temps carried this significant item:

"Contrary to the a.s.sertions spread by the German press and taken up by other foreign newspapers, we believe that the Government has no annexationist pretensions, openly or under cover, in regard to any territory inhabited by a German population. This remark applies peculiarly to the regions comprised between the frontier of 1871 and the frontier of 1814."

Again, in the lock of wills, the President was the victor, and the French and English press, exhausted by now, could only gasp their condemnation of Clemenceau and Lloyd George.

The statement of Mr. David Hunter Miller, the legal adviser of the American Peace Commission, with reference to the debate on the Monroe Doctrine, in which the President played the leading part, is conclusive on this point. Mr. Miller speaks of the President's devotion to the Monroe Doctrine in these words:

But the matter was not at an end, for at the next meeting, the last of all, the French sought by amendment to obtain some definition, some description of the Monroe Doctrine that would limit the right of the United States to insist upon its own interpretation of that Doctrine in the future as in the past. The French delegates, hoping for some advantage for their own proposals, urged such a definition: and at that last meeting I thought for a moment, in despair, that President Wilson would yield to the final French suggestion, which contained only a few seemingly simple words: but he stood by his position through the long discussion, and the meeting and the proceedings of the Commission ended early in the morning in an atmosphere of constraint and without any of the speeches of politeness customary on such an occasion.

Of all the false reports about the President's att.i.tude none was more erroneous than the combined statements that he was lukewarm about the Monroe Doctrine and that he declined to ask for or receive advice from eminent Americans outside of his own party.

In Appendix "B" there will be found a series of letters and cable messages, too long for insertion in the chapter, which will support the statement that he not only listened to but had incorporated in the Covenant of the League of Nations suggestions from Mr. Taft, including important reservations concerning the Monroe Doctrine, and suggestions from Mr. Root as to the establishment of an International Court of Justice.

Former-President Taft had intimated to me a desire to make certain suggestions to Mr. Wilson, and, upon my notification, Mr. Wilson cabled me that he would "appreciate Mr. Taft's offer of suggestions and would welcome them. The sooner they are sent the better." Whereupon, Mr. Taft's suggestions were cabled to the President together with Mr. Taft's statement that, "My impression is that if the one article already sent, on the Monroe Doctrine, be inserted in the Treaty, sufficient Republicans who signed the Round Robin would probably retreat from their position and vote for ratification so that it would carry. If the other suggestions were adopted, I feel confident that all but a few who oppose any league would be driven to accept them and to stand for the League."

Mr. Taft's recommendations were in substance incorporated in the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Emphasizing further the President's entire willingness to confer with leading Republicans, even those outside of official relationship, on March 27, 1919, Mr. Polk, Acting Secretary of State, dispatched to Secretary of State Lansing, for the President, proposed amendments offered by Mr. Root to the const.i.tution of the League of Nations, involving the establishment of a Court of Justice. Immediately upon receipt of Mr. Polk's cable, the President addressed to Colonel House, a member of the Peace Commission, the following letter, marked "Confidential."

Paris. March 30, 1919.

MY DEAR HOUSE:

Here is a dispatch somewhat belated in transmission stating Mr. Root's ideas as to amendments which should be made to the Covenant. I think you will find some of these very interesting. Perhaps you have already seen it.

In haste.

Affectionately yours, WOODROW WILSON.

COLONEL E. M. HOUSE, Hotel Crillon, Paris.

A comparison of the suggestions presented by Mr. Taft and Mr. Root, which will be found in the Appendix, with the existing Covenant of the League of Nations, will readily convince any person desiring to reach the truth of the matter, that all the material amendments proposed by these eminent Republicans which had any essential bearing on the business in hand were embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations as brought back by President Wilson.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

WILSON--THE LONE HAND